Publishing in the UK is developing rapidly and so it is vital that our workforce develops too. As digital innovation continues to drive growth and as publishers gain access to increasing amounts of data, the skills required are changing and new job functions and departments are springing up across all forms of publishing.

Modern book design dates back to the early 1890s and William Morris’s Kelmscott Press. The books were expensive but beautiful. Morris designed his own typefaces, made his own paper and printed the books by hand. They were designed to be read slowly, to be appreciated and treasured, making an implicit statement about the ideal relationships between reader, text and author.

A century later and the next invention to change the design world so dramatically was the Macintosh computer. Introduced in 1983 it was the first mass market computer specifically made with the creative person in mind. With its graphical user interface, integrated graphics software (MacWrite & MacPaint) and postscript fonts they allowed a designer to not only typeset copy but to lay out pages ready for print, marking the end of Exacto knives, hot wax and galley type. HL Studios was there from these early beginnings and is proud to be amongst the first UK studios to use them as standard.

As the internet evolved from the early 1990’s increased speed and bandwidth has given designers a whole new media platform to create for. The bulk of a professional designer’s work is now either for the web or application UI elements, all of which will be viewed and experienced through a variety of media devices giving designers ever more creative opportunities.

For the millions of people browsing bookshops and websites today in search of the perfect read and the years of research into design and emotional response, the age old adage ‘never judge a book by its cover’ has never been so irrelevant!

A new mobile app will be loaded onto the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 and Gear 2 smart watches. The aim is to increase your reading speed up to 1,000 words-per-minute by flashing the words at you one at a time.

Reading basics

Traditional reading involves publishing text in lines and moving your eyes sequentially from word to word. For each word, the eye seeks a certain point within the word (Optimal Recognition Point or ORP), after your eyes find the ORP, your brain starts to process the meaning of the word that you’re viewing. With each new word your eyes move and then seek out the ORP for that word. Once the ORP is found, processing the word for meaning and context occurs and your eyes move to the next word. When your eyes encounter punctuation within and between sentences your brain is prompted to assemble all of the words that you have read and processes them into a coherent thought. When reading only around 20% of your time is spent processing content the remaining 80% is spent physically moving your eyes from word to word and scanning for the next ORP.

Where Spritz claims to be different

“Spritzing can be learned in less than 5 minutes and, if you don’t spritz for a month, no practice is needed to return to your previous speed. From the fonts used to the algorithms that process content, Spritz is designed to empower effective reading on a small display area. Removing the eye movement associated with traditional reading methods not only reduces the number of times your eyes move, but also decreases the number of times your eyes pass over words for your brain to understand them.”

We’ve tried the online version in the HL Studios office and whilst it’s definitely fun to use as a test, is it really a viable alternative to traditional reading?

If you work in publishing, or you have children, you cannot miss the fact that today is World Book Day!

With events all over the country in bookshops, schools & libraries World Book Day is big news!

As an avid reader and lover of all things book, it surprises and saddens me how many people do not read for pleasure and Oxford University Press’s Books Beyond Bedtime reporthighlights this fact.

It revealed that many parents stop reading with their children from the age of 7 – when experts believe that just 10 minutes a day can make a dramatic difference to their educational attainment.

With Reading for Pleasure at the heart of the new National Curriculum introduced this term, this nationwide research involving nearly 1000 parents and school children aged 6 – 11 found 44% of 7-year-olds are rarely or never read to at home. This is despite the fact that nearly half of ‘reluctant readers’ of this age said they would enjoy reading more if their parents read with them.

According to Unesco (the United Nations agency which promotes knowledge), the biggest single indicator of whether a child is going to thrive at school and in work is whether or not they read for pleasure. Young people who read outside of class are 13 times more likely to read above the expected level for their age.

So if your not in fancy dress today, or taking part in a promotional activity, why don’t you make a nice hot drink and curl up with a good book?!

‘Stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity’

We’re a creative bunch here at HL Studios, and for today’s blog post, we thought it best to give you an insight into what inspires us on a daily basis when it comes to our work…with a twist.

Each set of images has been chosen by one of our members of staff, see if you can guess who’s is who’s. The images are linked back to the HL Studios ‘about us’ page.

This person chose artists that fall into a realm of what can only be described as ‘prog modern fantasy’ as their inspiration, in their words…”M C Escher, Chris Foss (wow!), Roger Dean, Theo Aartsma (Big wow!).”

This member of staff is clearly inspired by more traditional high fantasy artists, they have chosen Eyvind Earle, Hidemi Kubo, Brian Froud and John William Waterhouse.

Next up is a creative who finds joy in the bold and the brave, in their words “My inspiration comes from the flow and form found in design. I admire structured design, especially corporate identity. My influences are: Designers Republic, Banksy, Phillippe Starck and the wonderful world that is deviantart”.

Our next entry is from someone who takes their inspiration from the wonderful world of media as a whole…”design to me is the colors and shapes used in graphic effects for tv, web and print”.

The next entry has rather a lot of inspiration, they have listed them all here…”Sin City, 300 and graphic novel style art – not that awful manga sh*t. Coraline, Nightmare before Christmas, Morph and anything animated with models. Mexican Day of the dead celebrations and paraphernalia (am I sounding like a serial killer yet…?!).
Packaging. I’m an absolute sucker for great packaging design. Mobile phone boxes, the little hole in Maltesers boxes, Cadbury’s egg n spoon desserts, Mikado sticks… am guessing I should add food here… FOOOOOD!
The English countryside & the seasons. Photography and photo manipulation apps, take my phone everywhere and take pics of everything. And oooh I love a good sign as well…”.

Our last entry draws their inspiration from both modern and vintage forms of artwork, their list includes Lucian Freud, vintage movie posters and books from the 1950’s and 1960’s, and the clean cut designs we find on the world wide web.

We hope you have enjoyed looking at our inspirations as much as we have enjoyed collating them!

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In this post there are two simple step-by-step tutorials of how to illustrate a cartoon style and a more realistic style…

Cartoon

Step 1 – Draw your sketch

Have some fun with this, if you get what you want on paper the first time then great but don’t be afraid to experiment.

You can exaggerate features when drawing in this style, notice how the positioning of the features in the sketch are normal but I have played around with the sizing. The eyes are massive but the nose and mouth are tiny, the face shape itself is angular with a very pointy chin.

Step 2 – Start to ink your sketch in Illustrator

Once you are happy with your sketch, transfer it into Illustrator, you will want to put the image on a locked layer which is set to ‘template’ with a transparency of 50%. You can name this layer ‘sketch’ if you want.

This now means you can ink your sketch clearly on a layer above this one.

I started by drawing out the outline of the hair, and then started adding in the features, jawline and neck, all using the pen tool.

The tapered effect was achieved by altering the ‘profile’ of the pen stroke within the stroke palette.

Step 3 – Colour

Create a third layer inbetween your sketch layer and inked line layer.

Transfer the shapes you created from the line layer in order to colour block your picture.

You can also trace under the lines you created by locking the line layer, this is how I drew the whites of the eyes and the purple colours of the mouth.

Step 4 – Adding details

You can see here that I have added gradients, shadows and highlights in order to make the artwork not look so ‘flat’, you can really be creative here and use your imagination in order to create your cartoon character! All of these extra details were added on the 3rd layer.

‘Realistic’ Style

Step 1 – Choose your picture

For this style you can either draw your face as in the previous tutorial or use a photo. As long as you have the rights to the photo I would suggest this option as the end result is usually better.

Step 2 – Illustrator

As in the cartoon tutorial, place your photo on a locked template layer with a transparency of 50%.

Step 3 – Inking

For this style, we are going to be using coloured lines as they give a softer, more realistic effect. The black lines work for the cartoon style as they make the image stand out or ‘pop’ off of the page, with this style you need to consider the skin tones, shadows and light a little more.

It is easier to ink the drawing using a bright colour so you can see what you’re drawing, in this case I have used red as it really stands out.

Step 4 – Colour

Once you are happy with your lines you can turn them the correct colour and also create a third layer for you to start the main colour up.

It is a very similar process to the first style, its just a case of creating an image that is as close (as you want) to the original photo as possible.

Step 5 – Adding details

At this stage, you can add a lot of nice detail. Again I have used gradients, shadows, feathering, transparencies and also blends to get a good skin tone and feathered effect with the hair.